Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday February 19, 2014 @03:08AM
from the pong-2:-the-revenge dept.

An anonymous reader writes "We haven't had this discussion in a while: what games are Slashdotters playing these days? We've recently seen the latest generation of consoles arrive on the scene. Almost exactly a year ago, Valve brought Steam to Linux, and they've been pushing for stronger Linux adoption among game publishers ever since. Mobile gaming continues to rise (for better or worse), MMOs are still sprouting like weeds, and Kickstarted indie games are becoming commonplace. For those of you who play games, what ones have struck your fancy recently? What older games do you keep coming back to? What upcoming releases are you looking forward to?"

I can't recommend FTL enough. You're basically trying to pilot a ship crew through space, from one side of a universe to another, while being chased by enemies. It's fantastic! It runs on old and inexpensive hardware, and it's coming out with a big-time free update soon. It's a great game with lots of varying gameplay depending on your ship, luck, etc. and has lots of achievements and unlockable ships to keep you replaying it over and over. http://www.ftlgame.com

Might be the Diaspora [hard-light.net] mod for Freespace Open, which is really good.

Some back story for those that don't know, Volition (the developer behind Freespace 2) released the source code to the game about 10 years ago when it became apparent that they weren't going to be able to make a third installment. Since then the FS2 community has enhanced the game engine, fixed bugs, overhauled the graphics, added support for all kinds of new peripherals and created several new games, like Diaspora and a Babylon 5 conver

Don't start playing FTL unless you have a lot of spare time. It's about as addictive as Civilisation was back in the day - one of those games where you think you'll just explore a couple more systems and then realise that two more hours have elapsed. It's periodically on sale on GOG: I got it for $2.50, and it's been $5 a few times. I probably wouldn't have paid full price for it based on the screenshots, but based on the gameplay I'd say it would definitely be worth it. I think they priced it a bit too

I like the game, it's a great concept, but sometimes I wish it were a little less random. You often get into a bad luck situation that you have no hope of winning, abruptly ending a session in which you felt you were doing quite well.But I suppose some people enjoy this unpredictable "rougelike element in the game.

You are in a room, the exit by which you came in is blocked, and the roof is slowly closing down on you. You cannot leave the way you came, and you cannot stay here. The far wall has two doors on it. In between the doors is a table with a frog on it. A sign above the frog says this:

"One door leads to certain destruction, the other to Riches and Power. You can ask the frog one question, but it will always lie."

You look at the frog, with a smirk, you know this riddle and how to solve it, but your face falls. The frog has been dead for some time. Someone should have fed it it from time to time. In any case, it won't be answering any questions today.

Check out Rogue Legacy it's one of the best games I've played recently.

If multiplayer is more your thing I've been playing Loadout it's one of the first free-to-play games I've actually enjoyed.

I had access to the Titanfall beta if Call of Duty with Mechs sounds cool to you then you'll probably like it. The whole game is much better implemented than COD.

The Dolphin Emulator Devs finally fixed some major problems with Wind Waker in the latest snapshot so I've been going back to that.

For upcoming games the two I'm most anticipating are The Witness [youtube.com] and No Man's Sky [youtube.com]. Though I'm highly skeptical of No Man's Sky. It's incredibly ambitious for the small team working on it.

My pc can't handle Gone Home so I watched a let's play video to check it out, and damn, that was one touching story. Major nostalgia trip for me. I'd say it's more of an "interactive nostalgia storytelling" than a game though.

If we're talking about more interactive fiction indie titles like Gone Home (don't get me wrong, I really liked it), I'd like to add To the Moon. Brilliant writing and soundtrack, if you don't mind the classic JRPG look.

Apparently I'm nostalgic for my childhood in the 90s - I loved both the MechWarrior / BattleTech and Wing Commander / Freelancer franchises. MWO has been somewhat disappointing, but still fun enough, while Star Citizen looks to be coming along very well.

I really, Really, REALLY wanted MWO to be good. I actually supported that game with more than a hundred euros.

But it wasn't.

Don't get me wrong, their art assets are really good, the stage design works and the mech movement and aiming physics feel good. It is not an arcade game and has the right, massive feel, which was missing from MW4. However, their balance and game design philosophy is really out of whack. Missile balance, missile tracking, impossibly high heat capacities which encourage boating, the ret

I also was disappointed by MWO, but mostly because i came directly from the Crysis War Mod Living Legends. The mod itself is dead (as in no more development due to rights), but it still has a small devoted community playing it. It's got way more mechs and other vehicles but instead of a mechlab preconfigured mechs. Also a round tends to go towards one hour and the size of the maps allow for more tactics (also due to the possibility of buying resupplies and repair the mech)

I'm playing Wordfeud (an online game of Scrabble), I like it because of its pace - I have 72h to complete a move, so I can take my time. The game allows me to play with multiple opponents simultaneously; I've made some good friends and we keep playing for several years now. This game brings people together, if you let it:-)

Warp Life [warplife.com] is a particularly fast implementation of the Conway's Game of Life Cellular Automaton.

However it is not in the App Store yet. I'm the only one who can play it at present because I wrote the source.

I hocked my iPad when I needed the money. Someone stole my iPhone 4 when I left it on the table at McDonald's while using the can. I've been out of work for a long time so now I don't have the $99.00 for the Apple Tax, nor to buy a new iDevice.

My best NetHack story: had a cat that got polymorphed into a succubus. Since my character was chaotic (elf class from old version) i could gain alignment points by sleeping with her. also got to walk her around on a leash. It's great when B&D comes from emergent gameplay.

Dwarf Fortress is one to check out too. City building and Adventure modes. the next version looks like it's almost ready. Should be a _big_ feature update in a month or two.

I'm still playing Alpha Centauri, the successor of the original Civilisation. And I am playing Simutrans [simutrans.com], a free transport simulator. Call me whatever you want, but I never got the hang of the more recent games.

Considering its stratospherical replay value, Alpha Centauri has long been my dark horse nominee for best game ever made. And another oddity: after 15 years and (easily) thousands of games, I still learn something new about the gameplay every time I play.

Recently I also dusted off two old PopTop games, Railroad Tycoon 3 (~2003) and Tropico 4 (~2010). Loads of fun, check them out if you haven't already.

I should try it again. I found it frustrating on my 400MHz machine that gameplay became really slow when the map became complex (2-3 minutes for all of the AI turns to run really breaks immersion), but on a modern machine it's probably quite a lot faster.

Actually, thinking about how long I spent playing it, maybe I shouldn't...

And I should add, that I play Alpha Centauri in a VMware. As it insists on Full Screen mode, it just looks bad on a recent display which does not fit the game's 1024x768 resolution. Thus I finally have a windowed Alpha Centauri;)

Hell, I still sometimes play Elite 2 and Grand Prix 4 more than anything other than Perfect Dark (N64 or XBox 360 remake, I'm not fussy) and Time Splitters: Future Perfect. More recent gaming has kind of passed me by.

I'm playing OpenTTD (http://www.openttd.org). I played Simutrans a few (many?) years back and it was good, but the concepts are so different from Transport Tycoon that I find it hard to pick up when ever I try - it hurts my head because its similar yet so different.

I love the optimisation aspects of openTTD - maximising the throughput on busy lines and stations - the money aspect I couldn't care less about and always give myself a few hundred million when I start. I think I'll be playing it till the day I d

I have had Alpha Centauri on every computer I have owned since it came out. Such a fun game, you can play at a high difficulty and fight for a early finish, or play a lower difficulty and just tech to the hover tanks for a late world domination.

Currently I am playing Sid Meir's Railroads, thanks to the Humble Bundle. I can't believe I never played any of the Railroad simulators before.

I just got into Civ V recently and got the monkey on my back too. To make it worse, Civ 4 complete was the humble bundle last week so I picked it up for cheap expecting to play it when Civ V lost its luster but now I'm engrossed in that game as well...

Yup. I didn't get much time to play it over the past year, but now that my schedule is finally calming down Civ 5 is proving to be a bit moorish. I need to beat it a few more times on Vanilla before I get the two expansions.

The expansions enhance the gameplay to such a degree it's practically a new game. If you're enjoying vanilla Civ V then you're in for a real treat should you get the expansions, though you might want to wait until they have the (most likely forthcoming) "complete edition" upgrade which contains all the content rather than buying via the piecemeal approach.

I just got into Civ V recently and got the monkey on my back too. To make it worse, Civ 4 complete was the humble bundle last week so I picked it up for cheap expecting to play it when Civ V lost its luster but now I'm engrossed in that game as well...

Civ V was terrible compared to Civ IV.

Civ V is the first Civ game I have played that made me go back to the previous Civ game. Sure the graphics are good but they ruined the gameplay, the AI is completely neutered.

With any luck, Firaxis is scrapping the whole Civ V and going back to Civ IV for inspiration on Civ VI... but I'm not counting on it.

I'm quite a big fan on the Humble Bundles (one going on now). Many have at least 1 or 2 very nice games. I also try out some AAA titles on Linux, it seems like the new X-Com is being ported, which is nice.

At all. Ever. I had a bad experience with Warcraft, forgot to bathe, was missing appointments, people thought I had died. I finally gave the disk to daughter and told her to hide it. I still don't know where it is.

Since the stupid panda crap pissed me off, I dumped World of Warcraft and switched to Rift [riftgame.com] Now before I hear the F2P hate, be aware that this game is absolutely NOT pay to win. I am very conscious of such things and I've seen no aspect of it that you just had to shell out real money for. I have spent some real money, but just on stupid shit like a giant squirrel mount and of course "Patron" time which is what the monthly sub turned into (still $15). I'm fairly happy with it and the graphics blow WoW out of the water.

Ditto. The Panda bullshit was their last chance. They failed. I jumped back to Warhammer Online for the last couple of months of its life (which turned into a horrid cluster fuck so I bailed on the last week), then finally fired up Rift. I'm enjoying it. I played it over a month before I finally decided they deserved some money, then bought a three month patron pack.

Rift has had some issues with chat and ability lag. So they've overhauled their chat server. Predictably, it's been broken a lot. But Trion being Trion, this meant that we had actual devs (not "community reps", actual people who work on code) posting on the forums saying what was wrong, what they had fixed internally, and that they might try that if they had another crash, then putting that live, then reverting when it had problems... Actual information about what was wrong.. They seem to have fixed the worst of it now, so of course they are sending out freebies to all the players. Note: Not all the paying players. All the players, period. They are pretty good about compensation for problems.

Also this patch, they decided to make some mounts account-wide; if you get them on any character, all your characters get them. This will, of course, be retroactive, although it'll take a day or so for the updates. And of course, people asked what happens if you already bought one of these for two characters. Answer: They already thought about this, they checked the logs, this will affect very few players, but if you're one of them, file a ticket and customer support will make things right.

Basically, they are a company whose devs are active and engaged, who talk to people, and who try to make things right and are not afraid to admit their errors. They have consistently gone far above and beyond what you'd expect if you were familiar with more traditional MMO customer service. Excellent company in general. And they do make mistakes, but because they're willing to fix them, I am okay with that -- and I find I actually prefer it a lot to companies that refuse to take risks, and then don't fix things that were just bad ideas to begin with.

Local friends got me playing WC3 DotA, and I moved over to Dota 2 when Valve got the native Linux client working reliably. I also keep Civ 4: BTS around when I really have to be unproductive but can't sign up for an hour-long game.

Played City of Heroes till shutdown (still angry at NCSoft).Barely playing Champions Online. Cryptic and its various owners have pretty much screwed the pooch there.Kickstarted City of Titans. But probably won't really see anything for 3 years there. Keeping my expectations there realistic.

I miss City of Heroes sooo much. No other game is like it. Tried Champions Online years ago and it didn't appeal to me.

Since CoH died I played and finished or dropped Borderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, The Secret World, and Bioshock: Infinite. Only ones that I'm still playing are League of Legends (I dabble; nothing serious) and FTL.

I still hunger for an MMO as sweet and exciting as CoH. Might try Everquest Landmark someday, if I can get over my hatred for all things Sony.

I own pretty much every gaming platform around (other than an Android platform, I suppose) and tend to manage to play a fairly good selection of releases.

The big pattern over much of 2013 for me was my declining use of the old "home" consoles, edged out by the PC and Vita. The PS3 still got some occasional use, spurred by a few decent late-cycle exclusives (Ni No Kuni, Disgaea 2 and so on), but the last game I put any serious time into on the 360 was Forza Horizon, way back at the end of 2012. MS really let the 360 twist in the wind for the final 12 months before it got replaced. I probably used the 360 more than the PS3 for most of its cycle (it was generally better for multiplatform games), but I felt few regrets when I traded it in against a new Xbox One the other week, while I couldn't yet imagine trading in my PS3.

The growth of importance of PC gaming has been a real trend recently. For much of the last console cycle, "multi-platform" meant "360 and PS3". These days, it's a brave developer who doesn't include the PC in their line-up. This was also, I suppose, a big part of the reason behind the decline in my use of the 360. It may have been better than the PS3 for most multiplatform games, but it had no chance against a modern gaming PC. On the PC, I've mostly been playing Borderlands 2, Final Fantasy 14 and I still go back for the odd blast of the superb Rayman Legends.

The Vita, for me, is the best little console that nobody owns and I regard its lack of success as a great shame. There are some fantastic games on it and I've put a lot of time into Persona 4: The Golden, Dragon's Crown, Soul Sacrifice and the many, many smaller and indie titles on the platform. The 3DS, meanwhile, I still find a hard platform to love, though I did quite enjoy Bravely Default until its later sections.

I now own both a PS4 and Xbox One. Neither has really produced a game to wow me yet - but then, that goes with the territory for early adopters. Killzone: Shadow Fall on the PS4 is much better than I had expected from previous Killzone games (having some fairly open levels and a better graphical style). I've also been enjoying Assassin's Creed 4 on the PS4 (more games need sea shanties). On the Xbox One, Dead Rising 3 is fairly good and Forza 5 has mostly been fixed after a disaster of a launch. Other than that, both platforms are currently fairly barren for traditional games - though Xbox Fitness is really impressive if you like that kind of thing (I do).

At least the PS4 and the Xbox One have the excuse of being new. The Wii-U remains a crushingly poor platform, with tired Nintendo exclusives being the only real releases of note. Zelda: Wind Waker looks fine at first - but then I remembered just how tedious I found it the first time around. Super Mario World 3d has some good moments, but is spoiled by poor 3d controls and level design that gets quite repetitive in the later stages.

And on iOS... ugh. I've almost entirely stopped using the iPad for gaming. I still fire it up for the odd session on a plane or train, but its games these days seem to split between paywalled crudware (generally not even games by any reasonable definition) and worthy-but-slightly-lacking ports of games better played on PC, like XCom and Baldur's Gate.

I've also been enjoying Assassin's Creed 4 on the PS4 (more games need sea shanties).

IMO the land-based part of the game is pretty repetitive at this point, and the Abstergo sub-plot (super-plot?) is as usual pretty bizarre.

But I think I could just sail around the Caribbean listening to the crash of waves and singing of sea shanties for hours. And the ship combat/boarding mechanics are near perfect - it's what you always wished you could have seen in Sid Meyer's Pirates.

Yes, I'd agree with that. AC4 would have been better still as a pure "pirate" game, without the Assassin's Creed trappings. The fact that you still have a stealth-based combat system at the heart of the game feels odd, when something a bit more swashbuckling would fit the bill better. And yes, the modern-day meta-story needs to die. It was always boring in the earlier AC games but really is outstaying its welcome now.

Contains "daily challenges" (a one shot at playing s specific seed) for those playing it on Steam, which brings highly competitive elements to the game.Also, recently a tool for it emerged that allows to lock seed generation to a particular value, enabling competition outside dailies.

Website: http://spelunkyworld.com/ [spelunkyworld.com] and gameplay videos are aplenty on YouTube.Has a free "original" version with low-res graphics to get a taste of the gameplay.

Was Playing The Secret World but it looks like Funcom has killed the development budget, replaced content updates with insane grinds for gear and made false promises about delivery dates to string along the subscribers. Still recommend it. Buy it for $10 when it goes on sale and play it like a single player game, just be prepared to be disappointed by the largely nonexistent and very tedious endgame.

So now it's Star Wars The Old Republic. It's surprisingly good, especially if you aren't expecting it to be s

Yes - still playing the first one. I prefer the game mechanics - not so much of that skill tree and gear grind stuff you get in many other MMOs (including in a way Guild Wars 2).

I find Guild vs Guild fun even when my team loses (as long as I don't make too many stupid mistakes:) ). Just don't take it so seriously like some - after all nobody is handing out huge prizes for winning anymore.

Nowadays there's even a group starting Fort Aspenwood matches at about 10pm EST. But not enough players for round the clock nonstop matches so it's far from a full blown revival.

But who knows - the game is still decent for an 8 year old game, so more old players might come back and maybe a few new players join too.

Maybe there might be more players if Anet sold a more affordable and sane PvP package with full PvP unlock (e.g. you get to play all the PvP matches/missions, no need to grind faction to unlock skills, weapon modifiers etc).compare: http://www.guildwars.com/produ... [guildwars.com]with this:http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/PvP_Access_Kithttps://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-... [ncsoft.com]https://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-... [ncsoft.com]So getting everything unlocked for PvP will either cost you a fair bit of $$$ or a lot of time.

Or you could go instead play games like TF2 where you only need to spend money for silly hats;).

Of my new games, the ones I play the most at the moment are both in paid working status (with free options)

Kerbal Space Program $27 (Free Demo link) [kerbalspaceprogram.com] (now teaming up with NASA officially) [kerbalspaceprogram.com]
A fantastic rocket sim builder/sandbox, now working on the career mode side of things, if for some reason you haven't herd of this then give it a shot, learn about orbital mechanics and have fun at the same time, or just see how many Kerbals you can crash into the moon in an hour.. This game will remind you just how hard real physics for your tiny CPU to crunch.

Factorio $13 (Free Demo link) [factorio.com]
You have been sent to a new world to establish a colony and start industrializing it for settlement.. unfortunately your ship crashes and you are isolated from any other survivors, using you ''advanced'' technology you will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies so that you can reach the final goal of building a defensive space port. An ever improving 2d world with 3d models for a fantastic effect.

Older games, warning these are older games.. If you cant stand to do retro games, don't bother.

Master of Magic $6 @ GOG [gog.com]
Fantasy 4X game, that once some of the bugs where sorted became one of the best fantasy 4X's ever.. Others have tried to copy, non have succeeded. All Green magic FTW!!

Evil Genius $10 @ GOG [gog.com]
Build your evil lair, send your minions out into the world to plot, teal money and recover cool artifacts, and finally take over the WORLD!! Why Despicable Me has not cloned this is totally beyond me..

Unfortunately GoG doesn't offer the Master of Magic 1.4 patch. The last patch released by Simtex, 1.31, still had a ton of bugs. A man went through the.exe with a debugger, into the machine code, and fixed a ton of bugs. The computer opponent doesn't make nearly as many stupid mistakes now. It will now make and use magic items. Plus, there were a couple of huge bugs that never worked the way the designers intended, and now do. Plus, it adds a new difficulty level between Hard (too easy) and Impossible (so hard it's no fun).

I just got a new iMac with maxed out configuration and 4GB video memory. So I can run everything at 2560x1440 with all graphics at full/ultra. A great computer although I think that the Fusion drive could benefit from PCIE SSD larger than 120GB when the SATA is 3TB.

- Civ 5, which is good fun but I rarely has the time.- I liked the original Bioshock so I am playing Bioshock Infinite. It is ok.- The new Tomb Raider but I kinda hate it since it seems to spend more time with story telling than actual gameplay.

You know there are modern ports for these such that you don't need to use DOSbox right? I'd recommend the JonoF port of Duke Nukem 3D along with the various hi-res texture pack downloads and models that have been made. If you're a purist this may not be what you're looking for but the extras are optional.

I can't remember which Quake engine port I'm using (not at home and there's an absolute tonne) but there's also a hi-res texture pack that was done for it and it really looks good with

If you believe you have an IQ above your shoe size, and like open world sandbox games, I beg you to try this game. Its free. The only problem is that all games seem like two dimensional shadows after playing (and understanding) dwarf fortress. Download the lazy newbie pack to get half decent graphics and sound.

I do not pay GBP30 for a game. I'd rather buy GBP30-worth of older games. On average, I'll get more value out of them even if there are a couple of stinkers in there.

Indie bundles are my bread-and-butter, provided the games are actually ones I've heard of or look half-decent. I can't stand "greenlight" or "debut" bundles filled with what should be freeware / beta crap. That sort of tat, I can get from anywhere on the net. But nearly the whole series of the Batman games and a couple of ra

Over the last month or so I've really been into Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I've been a huge fan of the original Deus Ex (and, to a lesser extent, Deus Ex: Invisible War) and still go back and play it about once a year.

DX:HR is a worthy successor to the original.

I'm also a big fan of the Mass Effect and Fallout series. I'm working my way through the Fallout:New Vegas DLC (in the middle of Old World Blues, having finished Lonesome Road and the main game itself), though I really prefer Fallout 3 over NV.

After finished the NV DLC I'm looking at Skyrim, though the fact that I'm working on a PhD and my wife and I are expecting a daughter in mid-June might cut into my Copious Free Time.

If you're a big fan of Deus Ex, try Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

The graphics have aged a little, and combat feels a little clunky, but other than that, it is one of the best Deus Ex -style first person RPG's in existence. A vastly underrated game. The plot is one of the best, ever. Levels and atmosphere are fantastic. Yet, you only start to truly appreciate the greatness of this game on the 2nd playthrough. I think you will get the most of the game choosing a Toreador for 1st and Malkavian for 2nd pl

I play Nethack, FreeCiv and Morrowind (and very rarely, Oblivion). I rotate them out as I get bored with each game. For the Oblivion series, the player add-ons are what kept me hooked - there are some truly awesome player expansions out there, where the player is able to make a contribution in the first place.

Kentucky Route Zero cannot be explained to people, they have to experience the jaw-dropping beauty of that game for themselves. Ostensibly a point-and-click adventure game, it departs from the usual notion of narrative progression in some marvellous ways and all it's design and art features have been carefully polished to mesmerising effect. Currently has 2 of 5 episodes released and I couldn't care less how short each episode is or how long episode 3 is taking to complete.

This is my first MMO and I found it because of the calendar art pages that were circulating last year. It wasn't even the titillating nature of the game -I had no idea about that. Just liked the art.

Found out there was a game attached to it and that I could play it within my own abilities and within what my PC could handle, and ended up playing my first MMO ever. That was 8 months ago. I am currently the head for two different guilds and manage to have fun with the game nearly every day. I've made

Definitely one on my to play list... but for now: Games for Windows Live games - I'm an achievement whore and the service is likely to be shutdown come July 1st so the completionist in me wants to get as much done as possible. 8 of 43 completed so far, 55% overall completion with 5-10 unstarted.

Out of curiosity, any particular reasons you care to highlight as to why 4 and not 5? I've played both (and also 3), but it's been years since I played 4 and I've forgotten what each one did well or poorly. I'm pretty sure at least one of the earlier two versions didn't have the stupid research allocation system that 5 uses, and instead used a research queue like a sane game would... I really like SE5's tactical combat, though. Turn-based tactical fighting has too many limitations and too many ways to game

Have they finally implemented a matchmaking system for 1.6? I've finally gotten back into CS since they released competitive matchmaking for *gasp* CSGO, and I've been having a blast. 1.6 with matchmaking would be even better...

Seconded. Planetside 2 is the most fun multiplayer game on the market right now.

As the scale is truly massive, this is the place to go for both good, organized clan/outfit action and chaotic screamfests in TeamSpeak. If you want, you can really work as a part of or lead a whole platoon of people. I really enjoy it.

Eve never had a "native" Linux port. For a while, you could download from them a copy of the Windows client custom-wrapped in Cedega (which you were supposed to only use for Eve, since CCP had to pay them for it). The Cedega wrapper was big, the performance and graphics were nothing special, and there weren't that many people using it. The real reason they dropped it, though, is that Wine (that thing Cedega was forked from to poduce a gaming-focused version, ha!) was actually doing better than Cedega at running the Windows client. For example, Wine could run the DX9 graphics update on Linux before the official Cedega-based client could.

Plenty of people still play Eve on Wine, and CCP has a semi-official guide to setting it up. They may no longer officially provide a Linux client, but Eve is still playable on Linux.